“Experience Points” have been one of the default assumptions of roleplaying games since the days of pre-red-box D&D. While they certainly make sense in the strongly gamist context of old school D&D (where they could literally serve as a measure of how well a player did), I wonder why they've stuck around in drama-oriented games like White Wolf's World of Darkness and strongly simulation-oriented games like HERO.

Well, I do know one reason they've stuck around: they're easy. Once you have a point-cost value for various stuff in your system, it's trivially easy just to say, “After each session, give each PC 1-3 Experience Points. XP are spent just like Character Points to increase skills, traits, etc.” However, just because it's easy doesn't mean it's best. I don't think traditional experience points work that well with simulation and narrativism. The truth is, outside of their original gamist context, XP feel like a kludge, or a lazy man's way out.

One thing I find particularly irritating is when a game's uses a completely different cost scale for experience than it used for character creation (White Wolf, I'm looking at YOU). It's potentially game-wrecking because there are “right” ways to build a character, and not knowing whether to buy something up-front or with experience can lead to frustrating, completely unintentional power differences within the same group. This isn't Gandalf being in the same Fellowship as Merry and Pippin. This is Merry and Pippin starting out roughly equal, but Pippin becoming much more powerful than Merry due to the inconsistencies of the XP system. Simply giving the PC's some more of the “Freebie” points they got at character creation, and letting them spend them just as they would at character creation (possibly stating that certain Backgrounds or whatever can only be bought at character creation) would have been easier to write that the current system, and much easier on players and GM's.

Exceptions to the Rule

Some simulation-friendly games, like Chaosium's Basic Role-Playing (Call of Cthulhu, Runequest, Stormbringer, Elfquest), have abandoned traditional XP in favor of specific rules for training and increasing skills. Specifically, when a character uses a skill successfully, the player rolls a “learning” roll at the end of the session. This is a pretty good way to do things, except that it can lead to skewed results and odd in-character behavior. For example, the scholar whose knowledge skills are rarely mechanically tested, but who finds himself stuck in combat frequently may find himself becoming something of a combat monster, even if his abilities as a scholar come in handy frequently. I've also heard horror stories about PCs swapping weapons in mid-fight, because you only get one “learning” roll per skill per session. So once Sir Nugent has hit with his sword, it's time to switch to his ax (mid combat) so he can get a “learning” roll for his ax skill. Then, it will be time to bring out the spear, then the mace, and then the rabid-gopher-nunchucks.

Some narrative games, like Ron Edwards's Trollbabe, eschew the entire experience system. While items and relationships a character gains or develops can certainly increase her power, there simply is nothing remotely like a traditional experience point system. Frankly, I'm glad, because Trollbabe is a very specialized, very innovative game, and an old-school XP system would have been like stapling bowling balls to a runner's shoes.

Spirit of the Century, another narrative-friendly game, focuses its experience system on the characters' Aspects (if you don't know about SotC and its outstanding Aspects rules, check the SRD out: http://zork.net/~nick/loyhargil/fate3/fate3.html). In short, the aspects are colorful details about the characters, and can either to help or hinder the characters in the course of play, depending on the details of the situation. Aspects are interesting bits about the character, and focusing the game's mechanical advancement helps keep things interesting.

Experience in the Tarafore System

So how do I handle things in my Tarafore System? I'll admit I've included an “easy way out” option for XP-based advancement, simply using the Customization Points costs from the point-based objective character creation option. Basically, the GM could award 1-3 “Experience Points” per session (1 for slow to moderate-paced advancement, 2 for fast advancement, and 3 for very fast advancement), with 1 XP equaling 1 “Pip” (6 XP = 1 CP) from the OCCP. I felt like I had to do that as a companion to the point-based character creation system. But in practice, we don't use either.

For a long time, in practice, we mostly handled things through GM fiat. But the truth is, I was never satisfied with it, because as a simulation-friendly game, I felt I needed some consistent and somewhat realistic guidelines (internal game-world consistency is by far the more important of the two, since it's solidly measurable. “Realism” is somewhat more subjective). I hammered away at different options, including one that was so complex we absolutely didn't use it, until I found something that fit the Tarafore System's theme of simple simulation.

A character can learn any skill up to 10, or raise any specialization up to 10, just by studying “part time.” It takes about a month per “step,” or roughly 10 days (a week and a half, ish) per single point of increase, up to Average (10). Average (10) is the maximum a skill or specialization can reach without specific study and field work.

Beyond Average (10), the character needs in-depth study and/or field experience with the skill. For Average (11), Good (12), and Good (13), the character needs 1 month of study and/or field experience per point of increase. For Good (14), Very Good (15), and Very Good (16), the character needs 1 year of intense study and/of field experience per point of increase. Most “average characters” won't have any Traits or Skills above Good (13), in large part because the training is slow, difficult, and expensive, and because a certain level of raw talent is necessary to reach the “Very Good” level at any rate. Anything beyond Very Good (16) will require unusual in-game circumstances, and is best left up to the players and GM involved.

Final Thoughts

While Experience Points certainly have a place in gamist oriented RPGs, I think the reason they're used across the board, even in “storytelling games” like White Wolf's, is a combination of laziness and conventional thinking. Unless the focus of the game is a neophyte's growth into a powerful hero, it's much better to let the players play the characters they want to play, and then limit advancement to in-character events and training, than to force them to play a crippled version of their concept until they've gotten enough “experience” to fill it out.